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Baby pulled to safety after parents flushed him down the toilet

The
will to live is a very strong thing. A newborn baby boy, who was
flushed down the toilet in a public lavatory in China, remained jammed
underneath the commode fro several days until people heard his cries.
Rescued and taken to the hospital - the boy suffered a fracture to the
head but is in stable condition. Moved by his plight, people have
flooded the hospital with diapers, cash donation and offers of adoption.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - "When the baby arrived here, he was in critical condition," Nurse Zhang Songhe of the pediatric department of the Pujiang County People's Hospital in the city of Jinhua in East China said. "We suspect he has a fracture in the top right section of his skull. But now everything has been stabilized."

Zhang added that the mother of the baby has been found and is currently with her child in hospital. "The mother has been found. She is right now in the hospital. I heard she is a 22 year-old single woman. I don't know the reason she abandoned the baby."

There has been a great outpouring of sympathy from the public after the incident. "There have been three or four groups of visitors delivering baby formula some of whom have expressed willingness to adopt," Zhang adds.

News of the infant's predicament became plain after he was heard crying in a section of the pipe directly beneath a toilet commode. Residents living in a residential building in Jinhua in the wealthy coastal province of Zhejiang reported the sound of a baby crying in the public restroom this past weekend. Firefighters had to remove the pipe and take it to a nearby hospital where doctors carefully used saws to rescue the baby boy.

Named "Baby No. 59" from the number of his hospital incubator - was in a critical condition when he arrived at the hospital with an apparent fracture to his skull. His condition is now described as stable.

"We're going to take care of the baby. We are not sure when the baby can be discharged."

Weighing 6.2 pounds, the infant still had his placenta attached to his body when he was rescued, reports said.

Harrowing TV footage of the baby's two-hour-long rescue was uploaded onto the internet.

The baby was stuck in an L-shaped portion of the sewage pipe with a diameter of about three inches. Rescuers sawed off a section of the pipe along a ceiling that apparently was just below the restroom.

The rescuers then rushed that section of pipe to a hospital, where firefighters and medics alternately used pliers and saws to rip apart the pipe and free the baby.

There are frequent reports in Chinese media of babies being abandoned often shortly after birth, a problem attributed variously to young mothers unaware they were pregnant, the birth of an unwanted girl in a society which puts greater value on boys or China's strict family planning rules.